Left to right: Blade in front of painted subway car; Tovey Halleck at the Rivington School Sculpture Garden; Ann Messner with bolt cutters used to break into an unoccupied city owned building
When Gallery 98 began more than a decade ago our emphasis was on the history of the alternative art movements of the 1970s and 80s. The three short videos featured here bring us back to this early area of focus. Each explores how young artists during the 70s and 80s circumvented established ways of working to create new types of art as well as new ways of bringing it to the public.
All videos: written, edited, directed, and narrated by Cole Berry-Miller.
Blade: From Subway Trains to International Galleries
Blade: King of the Trains; a video by Cole Berry-Miller, running time 2:21 mins
The rise of graffiti in the 1970s and 80s radically challenged many aspects of the mainstream art world. Blade (Steven Ogburn) was an early pioneer whose innate sense of color, scale and design earned him international recognition. Much of the material used in this video comes from a large collection of Blade material that Gallery 98 recently acquired from his longtime Bronx friend, Ronnie Glazer.
The Graffiti Artist BLADE: Photos, Postcards, Sketches Sent to a Friend
Rivington School Sculpture Garden: Making Art Out of Junk Metal Found on The Street, 1985 – 1987
The Rivington School Sculpture Garden, 1985-87; a video by Cole Berry-Miller, running time 1:43 mins
In 1985, sculptors hanging out at No Se No, a Lower East Side artist-run bar, began using an adjacent empty lot to create a bizarre sculpture garden made up of pieces of junk metal found on the streets. The city would soon demolish their work but it has lived on in photographs by Toyo Tsuchiya (1948 – 2017), who in the year before he unexpectedly died collaborated with Gallery 98 in creating a portfolio tracing the garden’s history.
The Rivington School, 1983–95: Linus Coraggio, Toyo Tsuchiya
Breaking Into an Abandoned City-Owned Building to Mount an Exhibition About Real Estate, 1980
When the artist group Colab wanted to present an exhibition about real estate abuses, they decided that the best way to get attention was to break into an empty city owned building and mount it there. The exhibition was quickly shut down but in a surprising twist the Real Estate Show gave birth to the alternative art space ABC No Rio Dinero which continues to thrive 45 years later.
Real Estate Show and ABC No Rio
More Gallery 98 Videos
From our Newsletter archive; originally posted September 4, 2025
